This reminds me of a very powerful article that Nina Burleigh wrote over a month ago in which she describes some horrifying scenarios that women are currently enduring and states:

“We in the West should reconsider our own definition of the boundary between a cultural trait and a human rights violation, as it pertains to women. An extremist takeover of Egypt will be a disaster for Egyptian women, who must hope that the future will be better for their daughters than for them, and that whatever new society is being formed takes into account the universal – not just Western – human rights of women. The world and moderates among the Egyptian people must keep the human rights of women front and center in the discourse as they watch Cairo, and other Arab nations, transform themselves.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nina-burleigh/egypt-and-the-universal-r_b_819178.html

Strangely, this leads me to think of an overarching concept that both men AND women are oppressed when the distribution of power becomes skewed. A fairly recent article about, of all things, ‘wine and monogamy’ is part of what got me thinking this way:

“the Industrial Revolution in Europe prompted a growth in alcohol consumption for the simple reason that more people could afford to drink. That same economic shift also put a serious dent in the female-hoarding powers of superrich landowners. Factory jobs meant wealth was being distributed to a greater number of males, who now were working for cool cash rather than subsisting virtually penniless – and in many cases wife-less – on feudal farms. In contemporary parlance, a good job gets you the girl – the girl who would otherwise have shunned your romantic advances to settle for the posh life of a rich guy’s harem. ‘Since females are better off by sharing the resources of a rich male rather than singularly enjoying the limited resources of a poor male,’ the authors write, ‘there is a positive correlation between polygyny [men having multiple wives but NOT women having multiple husbands] and male inequality.'” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/wine/beppi-crosariol/article1890628.ece

So perhaps, the strategy should be to not focus on ‘men in general’ as the oppressors of women but rather consider the overall inequities in a society and work towards true democracy for all. Could it be that this idea is “so crazy it just might work……”

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One Response to International Women’s Day

Written by Patricia Leidl: http://patricialeidl.com/blog/here-there-be-monsters-lara-logan-and-the-madness-of-male-crowds/ was written in February, but I only saw it in May. Sad, horrifying, but worth reading. Quotes: “research has found that states with higher levels of violence against women are also less peaceful internationally” and “as numerous studies attest, not only is gender equality a necessary precondition of peace and security, but it is the most important predictor of future prosperity.”